Nebuchadnezzar’s
megalomania disease in Cuneiform, the Bible and in our own times

Borsippa ruins rises
many meters up in the sky over the plain and here Nebuchadnezzar of biblical
fame, restored temples of which this cylinder is evidence thereof. The cylinder
was found on the tell and in the year 1860 H. C. Rawlinson translated in a
paraphrastic way the text.(1) He admitted that he is not literal but just
giving sometimes the flow of the idea. The text was translated by a number of
scholars including the French translation of M. Oppert (3) published by F. Talbot
after his own literal translation of it.(2) A. Sayce utilized the translation
of Talbot and changed some of his renderings with his own suggestion. The
original copy of the text is in Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia Vol. I,
page 51 for some but on my download of this volume, it constantly showed up on
page 16ff.(4) And only partial since the site has commercial objectives rather
than academic objectives in mind. So it was not viewer friendly.

The text is important since
it provides us information on the mental status of Nebuchadnezzar regarding his
building operations. It appears that he dictated at times to the scribe so that
the scribe do follow protocol in publishing but the “spilled over” emotions of
the king, shows up in the foldings of the formal text. It is especially the
independent personal pronoun “I” that is of interest in the text.

Dictators of ancient
times and rulers of modern times share this common feature: they count the work
under their care as their work minus the sweat and tears of the grassroots that
made it all happen. In September 2019 Donald Trump for example, spoke at the G7
meeting instead of “My country’s economy is doing great…” rather “My economy is
doing great….”(5) It seems not out of place to put Trump in line with the managerial
styles of Jung-un Kim, Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Ghaddafi, Stalin, Hitler,
Mussolini, Napoleon, many popes between 538-1798, Justinian and Theodora and
one can include all the imperialists before and after Nebuchadnezzar. The “empire
syndrome” had its toll on these rulers (6). Their vocabulary, syntax,
linguistic expressions indicate this. This text is no exception to such an
endeavor.

The formula to open
the text of Nebuchadnezzar is very common by dictators of the Ancient Near
East:

1.Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babel,

2.the
established King, firmly united in the heart of Marduk.

3.the
great high priest, worshipper of Nebo :

4.glorious
Wise who is unto the celebration of almighty gods

5.uplifted
his feelings

6.the
sacred one without blame the restorer of the temple of Saggathu

7.and
the temple of Zida

8.the
oldest son of Nabopolassar

9.King
of Babylon, I am he.

The
visualization of the concepts in the formula and Nebuchadnezzar’s pun to it
would be as follows:

Nebuchadnezzar

King of Babel

The established king

firmly united in the heart of
Marduk

the great high priest

worshipper of
Nebo

glorious Wise

who is unto the celebration of almighty gods

uplifted
his feelings

the sacred one

without blame

the restorer of
the temple of Saggathu

and the temple
of Zida

the
oldest son of Nabopolassar

King of Babylon

I am he

The analysis indicates that Nebuchadnezzar arranged
his thoughts in such a way that starting with his name he will go to his title
as king and then list a long set of beautiful aspects about himself related to
his person, his piety, his guilt, his gods, his works, his passion/feelings,
ending with his relation to his father, his title again and with the words: “I
am he”. It is here that he is using the independent first person pronoun which
gives evidence of megalomania. The great I. The great achiever.

But, what one should notice is that all happened
because of sin in his life and a feeling of guilt. He left his blamelessness
just before he started to build the temples. The building of the temples was a
kind of whitewashing of his darkened brain with the self-adjusted feeling that “after-all,
I am not that bad”.

The audience to these acts of building, done by
artisans, engineers, technicians, men and women, young and old in large groups,
yet “I am he” the restorer. Is it not great, that I have build? He did not have
to add the independent personal pronoun at the end of the paragraph. Everyone
already knows that his name is introduced and all these listings are what he
has done or is or related to be, even his title. But he repeated the title and
added “I am he” looking back at this own name, Nebuchadnezzar, the chosen one,
the most beloved, the caretaker of gods, the pious one, the builder of
magnitude. “I am he” in case you do not know, in case you forgot reading the
long list and your memory faded out who it was that is spoken off, “I am he”.

Daniel 4 has much the same data to give us from
his perspective. Daniel interpreted a dream to Nebuchadnezzar and at the end of
12 months after the interpretation Nebuchadnezzar acted strange according to
Daniel 4:28ff. He developed a megalomania complex mentally.

“Is this great Babylon, that I have built for
the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my
majesty?”

The
independent personal pronoun “I” is used also in his verbatim words quoted or
cited by Daniel in this verse. The same neo-Babylonian independent personal
pronoun a-na-ku is used here as דִּֽי־אֲנָ֚ה.
What does this mean for us? Daniel wrote at the time Nebuchadnezzar lived and
it was not a later Hellenistic writer who tried to imitate an early important
figure called Daniel. Secondly, the disease analyzed by Daniel is clear, the
king went overboard. His mental capacities became mixed with his weaknesses. It
is apparently the same that a biographer from Zimbabwe said in England to the
BBC about Robert Mugabe who died on the 9th of September 2019. The
rulers become strange and say strange things and the followers are at loss for
words and actions.

Moses wrote in
Midian in 1460 BCE the book of Job and he understood this. He lived in the palace
of Egypt between 1518-1490 BCE and he fled in that year after killing an
Egyptian overseer in manslaughter during a sudden rage by accident using too
much violence than is necessary to make the point. Thus, Moses wrote that Job,
who lived in the days of Abraham in 2180 BCE, knew about ruler’s diseases mentally.
Job said in Job 12:20 “He removes away the speech of the trusty, and takes away
the understanding of the aged.” (24) “He [God] takes away the heart of the
chief of people on earth and causes them to wander in a wilderness of no way”.

So one is back
at rulers of our times and their strange behavior, whether it is the rulers of
Newzealand, Australia, USA, England, Germany, France, China, Russia, South
Africa, Zimbabwe, South Korea, Japan, North Korea and others, all share the
same phenomenon these days: something was taken away and the people are running
back and forth to seek understanding.

(1)H. C. Rawlinson,
“The Great Temple of Borsippa,” Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1858 but read
in 1855, starting the text at page 27-32. It can be downloaded online. Downloaded
on the 8th of September 2019 from https://archive.org/details/jstor-25228697/page/n1

(5)Republican
Graham compared Trump with Cyrus on the 22nd of April 2018 and that
caught on to Trump’s mind so that at the G7 in 2019 he looked to the sky to
signal that he is a chosen one. Media was outraged that he has the Messiah
disease. (For Graham see https://www.dailykos.com ? story ?). The interesting
aspect is that Daniel 11:45 indicate that the one who is fighting the east and
north in verse 44 is also the one who moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem in verse 45 but then it says “and he shall come to his end and no one
for him”. Ever since 2003, this phrase puzzled me since I could not imagine
that Pentagon will come to its end. Of course it will with the Second Coming of
Christ but the role of the USA until the Second Coming is in the heart of Revelation
13’s description of the second beast that is identified by historicists with
the role of the USA in conjunction with Catholicism as the First Beast earlier
in the same chapter. So if my interpretation as historicist stands, then Trump
was given by the Almighty a role for this time and he was seen by Daniel in
vision way back in Babylonian times.

(6)It is not
outrageous to compare Trump with neo-facism. His style of management is radical,
transformational, opportunistic and pragmatistic. He does have kindness and
compassion but these qualities are sometimes serving one of the four reasons of
his style.